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A dense crowd of excited tribesmen swarmed
around them as they were hauled into the
village and dropped roughly inside one of the
huts.
"Remain here and watch them closely," Gaa
snapped to the warriors who had brought them.
"The Sacred One is here!" exclaimed a Roon,
in tones of awe.
Carlin, looking up from where he lay bound,
saw Crazy Jonny staring down at them. The
mad Earthman, whom the Roons surrounded at
a respectful distance, gave Carlin a faint new
hope.
"Jonny, can you get them to let us go?" he
asked earnestly. "They'll listen to you."
THE madman shook his head. "Not even I can
save you now, for they know you have
committed the sin of seeking the Crypt of the
Old Ones." His voice rose, shrill with insane
fervor. "You were fools to come here
searching for the Crypt! Didn't I warn all in the
colony to keep out of the jungle? Didn't I warn
you all to leave Roo before your presence
awoke the Old Ones?"
Carlin, hearing that mad voice, gave up all
hope of assistance from the crazed Earthman.
Jonny was as fanaticaly superstitious as the
Roons.
Crazy Jonny had turned and now he was
loudly addressing all the awe-stricken Roon
people who had gathered in front of the
village.
He pointed up into the southern sky. "You
have seen for yourselves that the Crypt of the
Old Ones already has begun to open?"
A shiver of superhuman fear went through the
parrot-beaked red tribesmen. "We have seen."
"I bring you final warning!" shrilled the
madman. "Warning that tomorrow night the
Crypt will open completely!"
A gasp of horror came from the Roons. Crazy
Jonny raved on. "You will see it happen with
your own eyes. And you will know then that
unless you act swiftly to drive the star-men
from Roo, the Old Ones will come back to this
world and will again establish their dark
domain of dread."
"But each night we are offering sacrifice to
the Old Ones," a Roon chieftain exclaimed.
"Will that not assuage their wrath?"
"Nothing will prevent their waking but the
driving of all strangers from Roo!" declared
the insane Earthman. "Tomorrow night when
you see the great Crypt open, remember that."
Crazy Jonny stalked away without further
speech, and disappeared into the dark jungle.
The Roons looked after him in fearful silence.
It was clear now to Philip Carlin that the
crazed Earthman had become obsessed with
superstition about the Old Ones, to the point
where he was urging the tribesmen to drive his
own fellow-colonists from Roo. How had that
obsession become planted in the madman's
mind?
The Roons out there were talking in awed
voices, and looking fearfully up into the
southern sky where Black Moon was rising
higher. Seeing that, and remembering the
madman's words, Philip Carlin suddenly
experienced a blinding enlightenment.
"Grag, I've got it at last!" he gasped. "I know
now where the Crypt of the Old Ones is. Good
grief, we were fools not to see it before!"
"What do you mean? Where is the Crypt?"
demanded the bound robot.
"It's on Black Moon, the satellite of Roo!"
exclaimed the botanist.
"You're out of your mind!" exclaimed Grag.
"But wait--maybe it's possible, at that."
"It's the answer, I'm certain," declared Carlin.
"We thought the Crypt must be near this Roon
village because we knew the Roons were able
to observe the 'omens' of its opening. We never
figured it might be on Black Moon, which they
can look up and see in the sky each night!"
Before Carlin could elaborate on his stunned
surmise, he was interrupted by the loud voice
of Gaa speaking to the tribesmen. He was
haranguing the fearful crowd, and presently
they spoke loud assent.
Gaa came into the hut a little later with
horrifying information for the two captives.
"You are to be sacrificed tomorrow night to
the Old Ones," the Roon said. "Despite the
warning of the Sacred One, we still hope that
the Crypt will not open, that they will not
awake. Since it is you star-men whose
presence is stirring them to wakefulness, the
sacrifice of two of you may appease them."
Carlin felt the muscles around his heart
contract at the hideous prospect. "You're going
to give us to the night-dragons, you mean?"
"Of all the crazy nonsense I ever heard, this
stuff about the Old Ones is the wackiest!"
roared Grag. "Don't you know that the Old
Ones, as you call them, disappeared from the
universe a million years ago?"
Gaa nodded somberly. "Yes, they were
vanquished and destroyed on many worlds by
our ancestors of old. But here on Roo they
were not entirely destroyed. They merely
retreated into a sleep like death, from which
they planned some day to awake and re-
establish their ancient domain."
"You believe that the Crypt of the Old Ones
is on Black Moon, do you not?" Carlin asked
him.
Gaa nodded again. He pointed through the
doorway of the hut at the shadowed face of the
rising satellite.
"Do you see that round white spot near the
center of the moon's face? That is the Crypt of
the Old Ones, where they sleep."
"How, then, can you believe that it is
opening?" Carlin argued. "You can't see from
here."
"Yes, we can see," Gaa contradicted. "Look,
and you will see dark cracks on the face of the
white Crypt. They appeared there only months
ago, and have widened several times. They
mean the Crypt is opening."
CARLIN, straining his neck to peer up-ward,
did faintly make out the horizontal dark cracks
across the face of that white patch on the
moon.
"The cracks are there, all right," he said to
Grag when Gaa had gone. "Some accidental
landslips, I suppose."
"Landslips, nothing!" Grag retorted. "I'll bet a
planet against a meteor that those cracks were
made to appear, just to excite the Roons.
They're the 'omens' with which Harmer's bunch
have incited the tribesmen."
Carlin felt the force of the robot's reasoning.
He felt a bitterness to think that they had
finally penetrated the mystery, too late.
Darkness finally gave way to dawn. The long
hours of the hot day dragged by without
presenting the slightest chance of escape. They
were never unbound, and Roon warriors
watched over them every minute.
Grag broke the silence in the late afternoon
with a troubled comment. "Do you know, I'm
worried."
"I don't blame you, in a fix like this," said
Carlin dully.
"Oh, it's not that I'm worrying about-- it's
Eek," said the robot. "The poor little fellow
must be lurking out there in the jungle, afraid
to come to us. Suppose one of those hunting-
worms gets him?"
Carlin could not repress a half-hearted grin. It
seemed weird for his companion, in their
present situation, to worry about Eek.
Night came, and the Roon village stirred with
a fever of fearful anticipation. The great
dragon-drum began to throb in a muted
grumble as the shadowy face of Black Moon
rose out there above the ocean once more. It
was only a low, foreboding pulsing, not the
thunderous drumming that called the night-
dragons. But Philip Carlin's skin crawled as he
realized what soon was coming.
There was a sudden uproar a little later at the
jungle edge of the village. He glimpsed Roon
warriors running, and heard the distant crash of
an atom-pistol.
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